


Refuge of First Resort

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Co-Sleeping, F/M, Friendship/Love, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-04 18:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17309294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Maria returns from a two-week mission in Australia to find Captain America has taken over her dining table.





	Refuge of First Resort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Maria returns from a two-week mission in Australia to find Captain America has taken over her dining table.

Or maybe he’s just Steve Rogers, seeing as the blond hair has been dyed several shades darker, he’s working the beard scruff, and there’s no sign of the shield that she can see. But the notes and papers and tablets, and the TV screen split between the news channels and running on silent are reminiscent of S.H.I.E.L.D mission briefings, and days and nights spent sorting through varying levels of intel.

There’s also no sign of anyone else.

“Where’s Sam?”

“He had friends who took him in.”

No surprise there, Maria reflects. Sam has always been anchored in the world and in people, even if he chose to follow Captain America off the deep end. She hangs her keys and her purse on the hallway hook and doesn’t ask about Barnes. Wherever Steve has stashed Barnes, it will be safe according to his standards, and if he feels the need to tell her, he will. It’s probably better that she doesn’t know anyway – what she didn’t know, she couldn't betray.

As for the others, knowing Barton, he’s probably taken Maximoff under his (metaphorical) wing, and Lang is a master of dropping beneath the radar.

“I’m surprised they didn’t offer you sanctuary at the same time.”

“They did,” he says, sitting back in the chair. “I refused it – they were risking enough as it was.”

“And if I don’t like the risk that you’ve introduced by coming here?”

“Then you just might be in the wrong business.” He says it slowly and deliberately and his mouth quirks, slightly sardonic. “Have you heard from Natasha?”

Maria judges her answer as she goes over to the fridge and pulls out one of the microbeers that it’s been stocked with. Alcohol is going to be a necessary coping mechanism in untangling this mess – and she has no illusions that Steve came to her for anything else. Unlike Sam’s friends, she’s not the refuge type.

Her fridge is unusually full of actual food, most of it fresh, but quite a lot of it leftovers. The benches are clear, though, so he’s cleaning up after himself. She bets if she opens the pantry, there’ll be boxes upon boxes of energy bars. Two wrappers are already sitting beside him.

“Natasha is good at looking after herself,” is all Maria says as she opens a beer. She doesn’t ask if he wants one. “So, it seems, are you.”

He winces. “I’m invading your privacy, I know. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And I figured you’d have a reasonable level of security on your place.”

“Which you disabled.”

“You showed me how,” he reminds her. “Two years ago, when Sam and I were hunting Bucky.”

She’s tired, or else she would have remembered that. She’s also been crazy busy the last couple of years or she would have remembered to changed the codes. Maria heaves a sigh and goes over to the lounge suite she mostly uses as a place to crash. She flings herself down and takes a long swig of the beer. “What do you want, Steve?”

“I can’t visit an old friend?”

“An ‘old friend’ you haven’t called or spoken with in six months?” She’s pretty sure she’s managed not to sound bitter. Being dumped is never a pleasant or comfortable experience, and of all the people who she might have expected to abandon her once the facility was built, Steve and the Avengers were not on the list. “What do you want?”

“Was it that long?”

She looks at him, feeling flat and tired and unable to summon the fucks to give about Steve Rogers and his crusades. Truth, justice, and freedom. An end to all evil. Bucky Barnes and the love that never dies.

“What. Do. You. Want?”

“I want to know where the Accords came from. Who sponsored them? How did they take hold so fast? How did we get blindsided by them so damn _fast_?”

The outburst surprises her. It shouldn’t. But because it does, she quips, “Language, Steve.” It earns her a glare, but it also eases the tension. He sits back in the chair and his shoulders slump. And in spite of herself, Maria feels a wave of grudging acquiescence dragging at her belly.

“I don’t know half of what I should about the Accords – if I had any strings to pull before S.H.I.E.L.D fell, I don’t have them anymore. When we first heard about it—”

“We?” Steve arches a brow.

She ignores the pointed comment. He’s never liked what he perceives as Fury’s undue influence over her.

“We tried to make contact and were rebuffed. I tried alternative routes, Fury tried alternative routes; we got nowhere.” Maria sets the beer down on the coffee table, slouches down in the couch and leans her head against the back, closing her eyes. “Thunderbolt Ross doesn’t like us any more than he likes Banner. Possibly rather less, in fact. So, no, he’s not going to tell us about what he’s got planned for reining in the Avengers. Or the high-security facility I presume you dug Barton, Wilson, Maximoff, and Lang out from.” She opens one eye. “How was Akela’s intel?”

“Was that her name? I didn’t catch it.” Steve is watching her. “She wasn’t exactly forthcoming on names, even if she had all the intel I needed.”

“Akela is good at what she does. That doesn’t mean she’s a people person.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

Maria smiles and lets her eyes drift shut again. “Why do you think we get along so well?”

“If she knew about the Raft, why didn’t you?”

“I told Akela to look for something that might be used to inhibit or control the Avengers. I also told her not to tell me what was out there – just to keep tabs on it.”

“What you don’t know, you can’t betray.” Steve sounds resigned.

“What they don’t know I know, they won’t change so I no longer know about it.” Maria shrugs. Then she lets the air out of her chest in a great, long sigh. “What did you plan to do?”

His silence – absolute and unmoving – makes her open her eyes.

Steve is still watching her. It’s not a look she’s seen often on his face, but it's one she recognises: wary and fascinated and kind of hungry. It throbs in her veins, a quickening tug of lust in her belly, her pulse turning liquid between her thighs. Maria’s never quite been able to understand why Steve would look at her that way. Her own reaction to him is perfectly comprehensible; his reaction to her is utterly perplexing.

“Right now, I plan to go to bed,” he says after a few seconds of weighty silence. He doesn’t drop his gaze, like she’s issued a challenge and he’s meeting it head-on. “I’d like to take you with me, but I imagine you don’t like me very much right now.”

“When have I ever?” But Maria regrets the flippant retort the moment it’s out. But she doesn’t apologise. That’s not her and he’s learned not to expect it from her. But it’s ridiculous the way he looks almost resigned, like she’ll deny him – as though she’s ever denied him before. “Come to bed, Steve. You can sleep in mine, unless you’d rather the floor.”

He stands, pushing back the dining room chair, and – it occurs to Maria – giving her no room to rethink her offer. “I’ll never choose the floor over your bed, Maria.”

And while she sits and stares at him, he crosses the room, and reaches down to pull her up.

They stand, chest to chest, his head bent to meet her gaze, and after a moment when he searches her face for...something, she’s not sure what, he nods to himself, takes her head in his hands and kisses her.

It’s not a kiss they’ve ever shared before.

The first kiss was almost a war. Steve just wanted to fuck and forget and Maria was willing to let him take them there and not ask questions. Other times, while less fierce, were still urgent and needy: hard sex, rough kisses, all grasping and having, with nothing said in the aftermath of rough breaths and hammering heartbeats. Simple and easy.

This time, his mouth moves across hers, soft and tender and gentle, like he’s tasting her for the first time.

Maria’s never let him be gentle with her before. It could only complicate things.

She’s too tired to push this tenderness into hard lust. Or maybe she doesn’t want this to be simple anymore, and if she’s going to fuck up her life it might as well be with Steve Rogers: go hard or go home.

Whatever his motives, Steve doesn’t let her think about it, hoisting her up into his arms and carrying her down the corridor. When her room proves to be locked, he continues on to the spare room although she murmurs that she can open the door if he puts her down.

“If I can sleep in a bed,” he says as he sets her down on the floor, “You can sleep in my bed.”

“Just sleep?” Maria watches the flush rise in his cheeks, but he doesn’t look away.

“I don’t think you’re in a fit state for what I have in mind.”

It’s her turn for her skin to heat, but she doesn’t address it. She doesn’t dare or she’ll challenge him – and she’s pretty sure that won't end well. And he's right, she _is_ tired.

No, safer to undress to climb into bed for sleeping, even if it does feel surprisingly intimate – more so than stripping down for sex. The conversation is desultory, little details in the now, nothing momentous or important. And Maria feels...vulnerable as Steve urges her into the bed ahead of him, big and warm behind her.

Maybe it’s the nakedness, but maybe not.

Maybe it’s the way Steve turns off the beside light and slides under the covers, reaching out to tuck himself up against her, belly to back, lips to nape, his hand resting heavy yet undemanding on her hip.

Maybe it’s the way Maria finds herself settling back against him, letting herself relax against him, a measure of trust that she’s never given to any other lover – male or female.

It would be him, of course.

_And who’d he come to when everything else went balls up?_

Maria closes her eyes and, with Steve’s slow breathing steady behind her, drifts off to sleep.


End file.
